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kylorengarbagedump · 4 years

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Little Bird: Chapter 41

Read on AO3. Part 40 here. Part 42 here.

Summary: You need Kylo Ren to understand. He needs you to understand, too.

Words: 3900

Warnings: an attempt at emotions

Characters: Kylo Ren x Handmaid!Reader

A/N: Is this angst? Is this how you write angst? Is it angsty enough? Hahaha.

Thank you all very much for reading. Only four chapters left, and I am honestly terrified! Haha. I really hope you enjoyed this chapter, I tend to like the ones where I can attempt something new. I want the emotional beats to feel correct.

I love y'all very very much. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

You were awake.

Your bed was stone, a slab that poked through your flesh into the bone, forcing adjustments between tired sighs. Even though this movement exhausted you, you found it impossible to sleep.

It couldn’t have been the baby. After all, it was blueberry-sized at this stage, a time when most women didn’t even know they were pregnant. And it couldn’t have been pain, as most of it had subsided, or faded to a pleasant, ambient hum in your nerves, far more comforting than distressing. It couldn’t have been hunger, either--at least not anymore. Sneaking food from the kitchen after sunset had quelled your raging stomach.

But you still found it impossible to sleep.

It was obvious, of course, why you couldn’t, but it was a memory you wanted to avoid processing. Johana’s tattered voice, gleaming tears, her admission--I give up, you won--played in your head like a busted cassette tape, rewinding with a sickening click every five seconds. Your Commander’s decision, his cruelty, that remained unprocessed too, a willing rejection of his apparent reckless obsession. You would not, could not consider just how deep, how desperate this obsession was, would and could not consider the urgency of its terrible course.

If you considered it too long, you would feel its twin, the ache in your blood, the silver pulse of your own mirrored need--and know its depth and its desperation as easily as you knew to breathe.

You sat up in a sigh. Beyond your porthole window, the quarter-moon was an opal shimmer over the garden, and the only stirring residents outside were crickets, grasses shifting with the whispered wind. If you were going to be awake and miserable, you could at least gaze into something other than your own empty ceiling--so you rolled out of bed with a groan, deciding bare feet and a nightgown were plenty appropriate for a time where you planned for no one else to see you.

On your tip-toes, the creak of wood could be mistaken for the settling of an old home, your fingers skimming the walls for stability while you crept down the steps and through the darkened halls. You weren’t sure what time it was, but you knew your Commander to be a man of little sleep and littler compromise--seeing him was the last thing you wanted at this moment. When you reached the back door, you held your breath, flipping the lock and easing the knob to the left, prying it open, only to be greeted with a huge black shadow.

“Jesus Christ!” You bit a scream between your teeth, stumbling back--as your vision focused, heat rushed you. It was a Knight Templar. “Um. Hello.”

“What are you doing here?” This was Ushar again--you recognized his voice from earlier--and you relaxed, slightly. Your awkward moment with him was already addressed. “You’re not permitted to leave the premises.”

Another sigh escaped you, and you crossed your arms. You would’ve felt more embarrassed to be only in your nightgown if he hadn’t already seen everything else.

“I’m not leaving,” you replied. “I just want to be outside for a second.”

Ushar glanced into the garden, then back to you. Or at least, you thought he did. Helmet and all of that. “It’s late. The Commander will expect you to be sleeping.”

“Well, to be honest, I don’t really care about that right now.” You went to push past him, and he side-stepped to follow you. “Oh, come on,” you said, “why are you even here? He’s home, he shouldn’t need you.”

“We’re on duty until his meeting with the Council tomorrow.”

You blinked. “Oh. I thought all of that was today.”

He shook his head. “Preparation. Tomorrow is execution.” A pause. “Figuratively speaking.”

Dread sank its tiny teeth into your stomach. “Or maybe literally, knowing him.”

Ushar cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said. “Well.”

Silence settled between you. Strange, to speak with a man who had, less than 24 hours ago, stood in a circlejerk to spatter you with sperm, and stranger still to converse casually with him about the fact that your mutual Commander’s preferred solution to any issue was to blow its brains out.

“Well.” You cleared your throat, too, as if this would ease the tension in any meaningful way. “Look. I just want to walk around the garden a little bit. You can stand and watch me the whole time.” Half-grinning, you held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh. Um. Boy Scouts?” Your shoulders sagged. More heat at your face. Perhaps the strangest thing of all was the reminder that anything and everything familiar had been razed like a forest by Gilead’s flame. “They were like. A thing. Before…”

“Never heard of them.” Ushar paused, and pivoted to the side. “Go ahead. Don’t be long.”

“Thank you.”

Pinching your lips between your teeth, you slipped outside, neglecting the stone pathway and cutting into the grass. The little blades were fuzzy at your feet, wedging between your toes, and the air cleaned your lungs, the sky a lonely galaxy beyond the hedges and the yard. Gold twinkle lightning bugs flickered between the flowers, hovered above the pond, the sole source of light outside of the sterling moon and stars. You peeked over your shoulder at your sentinel--but he was motionless, observing you in silence.

Your feet carried you past the bench into the mini-maze, catching sight of the birdfeeder, the bag of seed. The Marthas hadn’t gotten to it, yet--not that they would have had time to--and in its day and a half of neglect, the bag had toppled over, spewing seed onto the ground, the feeder abandoned in two pieces by its side. It seemed almost rude, now, to see this mess and decide it was a job for someone else. With a shrug, you strode over, heaved the bag onto its bottom and started scooping handfuls of tiny kernels, dumping them back in.

They spilled like water through your fingers, raining onto your feet and the dirt--you seemed no closer to your goal with the next scoop than you had with the one previous. Another one, and another, and still the seed scattered, palms empty before you reached the bag. Sighing, you gave up, choosing instead to grab the feeder and pop on its top. As you gathered both halves in your hands, the backdoor opened, and you froze.

“Where is she.”

Your throat thickened. You dropped the feeder. He was here.

“She’s beyond the hedges, sir,” Ushar replied. “She just--”

Scuffing soles on stone cut him off, storming toward you--and you remained, unflinching. Even if you wanted to run, there was nowhere for you to go.

Kylo charged the corner into the maze, still dressed in black, his shirt unbuttoned low enough to expose his clavicles, which you hated to acknowledge. At the sight of you, he stalled, capturing you in his gaze, focusing on your figure, curves draped in your white nightgown, your breasts unbound, your hair wild vines over your shoulders. He swallowed, air rolling through him, attention drifting to your face. The muscle under his eye fluttered, his fists furled.

“You weren’t in your room.”

You knew hadn’t imagined it--the tremor in his voice, the quiver at his chin. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded scared.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Kylo took a single step--the distance between you seemed at once too great and too smothering, and he stopped, drawing a long breath through his nose. He stared, held it, chest rising, then released it, hands relaxing as he exhaled. His gaze slid to the hedge, tracing the woven ropes of leaves through the trimmed branches, wandering to the grass and landing there. The crickets hummed in the void. You would’ve asked why he had headed to your room if he hadn’t made the answer so plain to your eyes.

“The first time we met here,” he began, “I said I wanted to know you.”

You offered a slight shrug. “We’ve definitely become more familiar.”

“I do know you.” He glanced up. “I know that there’s a part of you that wants to stay.”

“Really.” Frowning, you shifted on your feet, ignoring the warmth at your cheeks. “You know that.”

Kylo stole a step. “Yes.” Another, and another. “I do know that.” Two more, and his long legs had brought him within arm’s length, his pupils wide in the night. “Because there’s a part of me that wants to leave.”

Oxygen escaped you, and you shook your head, averting your gaze. Crackled embers glowed in your heart; given his hesitations, his strangled frustrations, and your own inability to find resolve, this had been a part of him you’d already known. But to hear it from his mouth, given life on his lips, it was palpable. Tangible. You met his eyes again, paralyzed by their power--they were endless, brimming with emotion even you yourself had never been asked to name.

For a second, you forgot to speak, wondering how you could snatch this moment like spun glass in the air. Then you stepped closer, and grabbed his large, strong hand.

“Then why don’t we?” you murmured. “We can go. Just be. We can forget all of this.”

Kylo fled--for only a millimeter--before steeling himself, curling his hand around yours, and bringing it up to his face. He examined your thumb--now scabbed, but still sore, and stroked it with his own. Satisfied, he wove his fingers between yours, pulled you to his chest.

“All of this,” he said, “is under my control, now. I can keep you safe.” His other hand cupped your cheek, fingers coasting over your skin. “Make you want for nothing.”

Staring into him, into the vortex of his gaze, you tried to swallow the thickening desire to admit the only thing you did not want him to know.

“You keep saying that,” you replied, tugging his hand from your face. “But as long as I’m in Gilead, I will never want for nothing.”

His hand squeezed yours. “There’s more I need to do.”

You shook your head again. “Well, even if you could make that happen--”

“I can.”

“Even if you could.” You unwound your grip from his, stepping away. “What about everyone else?” The Resistance, the car chase, Poe’s head, Snoke’s mansion, the dress, the party, Tera Jackson, the Widows, the Wives, Johana--all dangled above your brain, a broken mobile composed of the casualties of your affair. “It’s not enough, it’s not fair to change my life when it makes everyone else suffer,” you said. “Why not just live a life where you don’t have anything you need to change?”

He raised a brow, as if he hadn’t understood the question. “Because I need to.”

You sighed. “But why?”

Kylo’s gaze broke from yours, aiming beyond you as his tongue traced his teeth in thought. A soft exhale, and his attention returned. “The world was flawed, before Gilead.”

“Gilead has only made the world more flawed.”

He grumbled. “Do you understand what happens to those without direction?” he asked. “Without order?” You were silent, waiting for him to continue--he speared you with his stare. “Chaos.” A tension in his throat. “Suffering.”

“Those without direction…” Head tilting, you searched his face. Puzzle pieces shifted close, edges locking--his rage, the graveyard, his terror, his Wife’s own words. “If the world wasn’t flawed, you wouldn’t have been abandoned,” you said. “That’s what you think.”

His eye twitched, jaw rigid. “It made sense.” Blowing air through his nose, he paced around you, fingers curling in and out of fists. “Snoke made sense. At first.” He huffed. “But he was just as flawed.” Steady and still, you watched him, watched his thoughts race through his mind, watched while he struggled to match them with words he had never had to speak. “Only I understand the consequences of chaos. Only I have the capability to perfect this.”

It emptied you, his hopelessness, his resignation that the only way out of his depthless hatred was to drown it in a void of control. You knew another way--knew it was nested within the words you couldn’t say.

You sighed. “You think that will fix it?” you asked, folding your arms over your chest. “You think that will make you satisfied? More whole?”

Kylo rounded, shoulders pinned back, a predatory curve to his spine. “Were you satisfied with life before Gilead?” he asked. “The loneliness. The uncertainty.” He drew closer, trapping you in his gaze. “Falling asleep empty. Waking up in agony.” Inches from you, he clutched your shoulder, turning you toward him, brushing your hair to your back. “I know your life, little bird.” His hand pinched your chin, his tone tinged with ire. “I know it because it was mine.”

Heat flashed through your spine. “It still is your life,” you growled, swatting his wrist and backing away, “you’re still miserable. And it’s still my life too, and it will be as long as you keep me!”

“You’re miserable,” he said, following you step for step. “You are the one who said you wanted all of me.” He was chasing you, stalking you as you retreated further into the maze, eyes rimmed gold in anguish. “And now you want to leave. Like everyone else.”

Your heart fractured. “Kylo--”

“I will end the Council if I need to.” He was black-winged in the moon’s shadow, a luminous Lucifer. “I will tear out every tongue that threatens your life if it will keep you here.”

A branch caught your sleeve, and you stumbled for only a moment, chin stiff. The threat was not hollow, but it was equally not wise. In his wrath, Kylo Ren did not believe there was a fight he could lose. In your sanity, you did not believe there was even a fight to be had.

“You can't do that. You know you can't.” A curly finger of the maze tugged you into the vines--you shrugged it off. “You know you won't be able to keep me safe forever.” There was no cease to his advance, no glimmer of cessation. “Johana is right.” The words flew from your mouth in a bid to convince him. “The Council won't stand by this. There's no such thing as divorce--”

“I don’t care.”

“--there’s no such thing as living with your Handmaid, I mean, do you expect us to get married--”

“I don’t care!”

Rapt in his gaze, you stumbled again, back flush with a wall of leaves, and Kylo consumed you, a silhouette against the sky, swallowing your sight. One hand grasped your wrist, the other pressed to your cheek, his palm smooth, your skin hot at his touch. You resisted the urge to melt into it.

“I want you,” he breathed, your name a ghost on his tongue. “I need you.” His lips trembled. “You are the only thing that makes sense.”

You were trembling too, quaking as you struggled to restrain the inevitability forming in your throat. Kylo Ren had been your Commander, the architect of your suffering. And he had been the only one in over three years to stir you, save you, see you--to care if you lived or died, to truly and genuinely desire not just your mouth, but the thoughts that came with it.

He had found you. You didn’t want to be lost again.

“I want you, too.” You nuzzled his hand, and he led you closer. “I need you, too.”

Kylo gathered you against his body, the hand at your wrist sneaking to caress your back, his fingers carding through your hair. There was no vacancy in his eyes; they were flooded, overflowing with warmth, with worship. You felt it--the thump of that silver pulse, the genesis of a clandestine reality you wanted, with every screaming cell in your body, to speak into existence--felt its weight as an echo on his tongue. His lips parted, his focus falling over your face.

Words would damn you. So you thrust your hands in his hair and pulled him into a kiss instead.

He enveloped you, mouth meeting yours as if it’d been years, a tender groan cresting in his chest while his grip clung to you, seeking your flesh through cloth. Humming in bliss, you sketched over his scalp with your nails, basking when he gasped and shivered at your touch, your tongue slipping past his teeth and sliding over his own. He moaned into you, pressing you to his frame, breaking off only to kiss you again, lips touching once, twice, before his full, plush mouth massaged yours and his tongue returned. There was no fury, no primal insistence--Kylo cradled you and contained you, held you like a man who was terrified to lose you, terrified to let you go.

Soft lips skimmed yours, and he stepped between your legs, pressure digging the hedges into your back. You whimpered in shock--he stopped and snatched you to his heaving chest, seeking the origin of your pain. It almost made you laugh, this protective urge, when you still bore the bruises and bumps from the previous night. Grinning, you eased away, catching his face in your hand and forcing him to meet your gaze. His eyes swam, spinning oceans, eager and alive. Your breath hitched. It left your mouth without even trying.

“I don’t want to leave you,” you said. “Leave with me.”

Kylo paused--you could almost see his mind reeling--as he stared at you. His chest fell with dejected air, and he held you closer, tighter. A strong hand returned, cupping your face again. His head offered the tiniest shake.

“It’s too late.”

Your heart fractured further. “No, it’s not.”

His hold left you, then, comfort torn like skin from your bones when he stepped back. In summer air, you froze, icy without his embrace.

“What I’ve done…” He glanced to the side, pacing away, steps taking him a slow circle while he gazed into the corners of the mini-maze. “What I’ve done cannot be undone.” Looking back to you, the knot in his throat bobbed. “Even if I wanted it.” His hands clenched, unclenched, and he approached you again. “If I leave,” he said, “it won’t be with you. I will be arrested.” The severity in his expression petrified you. “Or I will be dead.”

Perhaps, in the back of your head, you’d always known this, always known that escape was not a simple solution for a Commander, and certainly not a man like Kylo Ren. But to hear him acknowledge it too, to seal himself to his own inexorable conclusion--it decimated you.

“Oh,” you said, as it was the only sound you could make for a moment. “War crimes.”

Kylo’s head dipped in acknowledgement. “Yes.” A pause, and he turned, thoughts cast across the yard, before swiveling back to you. “To stay is the only way,” he said. “For you to be mine.” He gestured to the garden. “For this to be ours.”

You frowned. “Ours?”

His hand dove into his pocket, plucked his wallet free. Stone-faced, he flipped it open, fished into the slot and produced a folded piece of paper, presenting it to you as an answer. Cocking a brow, you pinched an edge, looking between him and the little note as you unfolded it.

One corner was swathed in smooth, swooping ink, the opposite end festering with wobbly attempts at leaved-lines. In the middle, they met, blooming into a tiny Eden--beautiful, borne from the hallowed recognition that suffocated, unspoken between your mouths.

“Kylo…” Chin quivering, you suppressed a laugh. “You think,” you said, “after all of this, what I want is, is… to what, control this with you?”

“No.” His tone was serious. Sincere. “You want freedom. You want me.” Stepping toward you, he took your hand, dwarfing it in his own. The heat of his body choked you. “But we don't get to choose what we're owed, little bird. Destiny decides it for us.” His attention flitted to you and the drawing. “I know what roles we are meant to fulfill. This is not just mine.” His gaze bored into you, chaining you in a plea. “It’s yours.”

Kylo Ren did not want to leave. He wanted you with him. In power. In whatever capacity he decided.

The offer was not only disappointing, it was insulting. To think you would want to stay in a land where you’d watched women hang, to remain in a nation where, without him, you could never hope to survive. No matter what route you chose, with him, you lost. There would be no agency for you in a world where you reigned standing on cadavers. And for your child--there was no purity coming home to a burial ground.

You glanced at the drawing, mapping it to memory, imagining it in his pocket while he met with Council members, ferreted threats, worked late into the night--pictured it tucked away at his hip in the Audi, stowed somewhere safe on the Buzzard when he was with his men. And your fractured heart splintered into scarlet shards.

Meeting his eyes, you shook him free, taking the sheet in two hands. Without a blink, you shredded it in half, layered it, ripped again. You caged him in your stare, unflinching, as you turned the paper into flakes, tear by tear, and littered them across the grass. Kylo watched, carved from redwood: large and flushed and eerily still, until his gaze dropped to the ground. He was speechless--and the inevitable words burgeoned, a tangled mass in your throat again. This time, you said them.

“I hate you.”

His eyes snapped to yours, struck black with horror--but before he could think to respond, or you could take it back, you fled, sprinting through the maze with your nightgown hiked to your knees.

There was no sound behind you, not even the crunch of boots, and you were grateful for it, grateful as you skipped past the pond and up the stone path, as Ushar veered to the side, as you pounded the halls and up the steps to the annex. You were grateful that you hated Kylo Ren, grateful that it would not hurt when you rended him from your heart, grateful that whatever route you chose, without him, you’d win.

It was gratitude, certainly, you felt when you opened the door to your room, an empty hole and empty bed. It was gratitude, too, that flooded you when you collapsed onto the mattress with a groan, and gratitude that stung your sight, flowed past your cheeks, stained your pillowcase. Thank God, thank God you hated Kylo Ren, thank God he was so easy to hate, thank God you would not ache when you left him behind, made a home without him, or gave birth to his child.

A tiny knock on your door. You stopped, cries arrested in your chest, as you cranked your neck to the threshold. Were it not for this timid request for permission, you would’ve ignored it in belief it was the only person you did not want to see. Clearing your throat, you straightened and hopped onto your feet, wiping your face clear--not of tears, but gratitude--while you turned the knob and cracked it open an inch.

Johana, cloaked in a frilly blue robe, stood anxious in the hall. Her face twitched with fear, her eyes stark, her mouth tight. In silence, she held out her fist, and opened her palm.

The switchblade.

#kylo ren smut #kylo ren x reader #kylo x reader #kylo ren imagine #kylo ren #kylo trash #little bird #handmaid au #fanfiction problems #i am so sorryyyyy

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